My sister-in-law Janet finally calls in. The news is terrible.
Her son's wife, Lucy Fishman, is missing, presumed dead. She
was a secretary, worked on Floor 104 of the south WTC tower.
It had been two years since I'd seen her, and at that time
she worked for a different company, downtown but not WTC.
They came out to see us in NJ shortly before we moved to KS.
I made dinner -- mostly Italian, trying to negotiate my way
past some known picky eaters (and failing completely), but
Lucy was enjoyed everything. We talked computers: she talked
of Microsoft software failing so frequently that she described
Dr. Watson as her "best boyfriend."

For me, this put a face on the tragedy. My first considered
reaction on 9/11 was to recall Malcolm X's "chickens come home
to roost" quip: the lesson that years of racist violence sown
comes back, not in kind but in new and resourceful ways. But
the subtext, that the original violence explains the ensuing
violence, misplaces the key point, which is that the cycle of
violence has to be broken. We cannot allow anything that came
before to justify the WTC attack, nor can we allow the WTC
attack to justify further attacks on innocent people. The
bottom line here is that there is no way that someone like
Lucy can be held accountable for any aspect of US or US-backed
violence in the Islamic world. Nor should she be cause for
further violence.

I recall Wendell Berry's essay on the Iraq war,
Peaceableness Toward Enemies, where he argues that the only way
to have peace is to become peaceable. Those of us who survived
Sept. 11 have survived a wake-up call: we need to look at our
lives, and work all the harder to make right.

In Brooklyn, chez Liz Fink, on fateful day. Liz was to fly to
CA that morning; Laura to KS that afternoon. Liz left early for
airport. I got up around 9AM, saw white smoke out of south
window, was pleased to see that yesterday's rain clouds had
parted. Liz came back, told us that a suicide bomber had
attacked the WTC. We look out window and could see, I think,
one tower burning: smoke black from tower, but white as it
wafted over Brooklyn.

We turn TV on; now both towers are
burning. We watch TV, hear of up to eight hijackings, watch
the towers fall, the Pentagon burn. "America Under Attack"
was emblazoned on TV, an instant reduction that only fueled
the growing war talk. I spent much of the morning thumbing
through a photo book called Century -- a graphic
reminder of how grisly the 20th century had been, of what
modern war really looked like, on scales both large and
small. With so much history in front of me, it was easy
to imagine scenes of real war, and identify why today is
different.

Imagine, for instance, being in Sarajevo, surrounded by
hills and the persistent threat of mortars. Imagine being
in London during the Blitz. What's different today is
that once you escape the WTC area, you're safe. We see
people strolling across Grand Army Plaza: no panic, just
a long walk home. One can imagine far worse: a small,
dirty nuclear bomb tucked into a small truck in a downtown
traffic jam would have caused a panic evacuation of all
Brooklyn. New York never seemed so vulnerable. But even
a hijacked nuclear bomb would fall short of war these
days.

Later we see a grainy broadcast from Kabul, a rocket flare
and explosion. Speculation was that America was striking
back -- temporarily forgetting that Afghanistan already
had more war than it would ever need. I commented that
if indeed the US attacked Afghanistan, it would mark the
second time that Afghanistan destroys an empire. (Writing
these lines on 10/28/2001, I stand by that analysis.)

Movie: Sexy Beast. Two months after its first
flush of hype, this movie comes to Wichita. I counted maybe
six people in the theater -- second matinee on the first
Saturday, not an auspicious beginning. But as it turns out,
the movie is a crock: the same retired crook makes last big
score script as The Score (and, or so I hear,
Swordfish), except all around cruder and dumber.
Ben Kingsley's turn as a sadistic thug is almost funny.
B-